Audience Solutions consists of first-party segments and third-party segments. Contact your Account Manager if you have a Small Business account.
First-party segments
Audience Solutions helps create richer first-party segments without the need to add additional pixels or tags to your sites or apps. You can define audience segments based on how users interact with your site or app and what content they see. Segments with a page view or app activity of 1 and no recency are added immediately, while others will take up to 48 hours. Learn how first-party segment membership is determined
With first-party segmentation you can monetize your site or app more effectively by targeting campaigns to the highest value user. Here are a few ways in which you can do that:
Create segments based on users' behavior across your sites or apps
If there are areas of your site or app that consistently sell out, use Audience Solutions to serve ads to those users as they navigate to other parts of your network.
Example
Your "Dining Out" section sells out consistently, but your advertiser (a local restaurant) wants to reach users who are researching restaurants. You can create a segment "Restaurant Enthusiasts" defined as two page views or app activities in three days. Once a user meets that criteria, they are placed in that segment. So, when they go on the Sports section of your site or app, they will be served the ad for the local restaurant, even though they're not in the "Dining Out" section. The advertiser has the opportunity to follow a user's interests across your network.
Audience Solutions also allows you to use first-party segments by targeting users across unsold run-of-site or run-of-app inventory. CPMs for Audience Solutions targeting should be higher than run-of-site or run-of-app CPMs, as Audience Solutions transforms run-of-site or run-of-app inventory into premium inventory.
Use Audience pixels to target segments
Pixels allow you to target segments from areas of your sites or apps without having to use Ad Manager ad tags. Pixels also allow you to populate segments from partner and advertiser sites or apps.
Example
Use Audience pixels to create targeting opportunities for advertisers to re-target to their customers. Let's say that Credit Card ABC is interested in targeting users that have visited their site or app.
Your approach would be to:
- Create an Audience Solutions segment of "Credit Card ABC Users".
- Work with Credit Card ABC to implement an audience pixel on their website or app. Learn more about building first-party segments based on pixel tags.
- Target ads to "Credit Card ABC Users" across your network.
Target a user based on their actions with an ad or creative
You can add a user to a segment based on an action they take, then target that segment to a particular line item.
Example
Print coupon functionality. You can disallow users from printing multiple coupons when they click a link within a creative. Once the user clicks to print the coupon, the user is placed into a segment. The next time they view the page or app, they are shown a different creative.
Use your offline data as first-party segments in Ad Manager
If you have your own demographic or user data already, you can use key-values to pass them into Ad Manager and turn them into segments. You can also batch upload lists of identifiers (cookies, mobile advertising IDs (AdID or IDFA), or PPIDs) to create first-party segments. Learn more about using batch upload identifiers.
Example
Through registration data, you might know your users' gender and age. You can pass this data into the ad tag dynamically as a key-value as those users move across your site or app. Then you can create first-party segments in Audience Solutions by targeting those key-values.
Learn how to Create first-party audience segments.
Third-party segments
Audience Solutions allows you to integrate third-party segments directly into Ad Manager. You can forecast, traffic, serve, and report on them. Vendors include BlueKai, eXelate and many others to further enrich what you can offer to advertisers. Third-party segment vendors typically charge for their segments. Contact the vendor for details.
By using third-party audience data in your campaigns, you can:
- Expand your reach into advertising categories that aren't characteristic of your site.
- Increase the value of run-of-site inventory by serving more valuable premium ads.
- Access demographics through third-party data providers that you can overlay with your own audience data to deliver more valuable impressions to advertisers.
Learn about Google Certified Publishing Partners.
- Use third-party data to identify additional inventory to meet advertiser demands that you might not be able to with your own audience data.
